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YarnCanada.ca Giveaway!

Have you ever done any charity knitting or crochet? There are so many ways to give back to your local community or to help others around the world. I’ve done a lot in the past…through the Montreal Knitting Guild, my local hospital or volunteer Facebook groups, my friends and I have made everything from Teddies for Tragedies to chemo caps to birds’ nests for Australia. Most recently the Warm Hands Knitting club from my local Federation CJA spent last winter making hats, scarves, and slippers to keep our elderly community warm.

It feels great to give back and YarnCanada.ca is giving you the chance to get the yarn for your projects donated to you, free of charge.

Yes that’s right – they’re giving away yarn for FREE!

They’ve just started their 4th annual event of giving yarn to individuals and groups who knit or crochet for good causes!

In partnership with Bernat and Patons Yarn, they’re giving away $4000 (!!) worth of yarn to 12 different charitable individuals/groups. The hope is that the yarn goes to wherever it can do the most good.

And even better – this opportunity is open to both Canadians and Americans! Yes that’s right – they will ship the free yarn to the US!

To apply all you need to do is click the image above (or click here), fill in the form and tell them your story. Let them know what you will use the yarn for, what impact this or previous projects have had, or anything else important to your story. You can even attach photos to show them past charity projects you’ve done.

You have until January 13th 2022 to apply. Good luck!


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yarn and a contest

Like the stash from yesterday?  I’ve got more to show you.  I picked up some yarn for two gift knits, but will show them to you in separate posts to stretch out the blog fodder.  :]

This is some Smart Superwash I picked up for another baby knit.  Robyn chose the colors so I can knit a dinosaur for her son Mackenzie.  (I’d knit an elephant (Rav link) for her first son, Sean).  I think he’ll turn out really cute!  (PS- my original photo was taken flashless, but came out so blurry you’d get motion sickness just looking at it.  Flash it is.)

On a completely unrelated note, I decided to enter a little contest Bea is having.  Click here if you want to go play too (you have until November 2nd)…but if you do, please tell her I sent you, as it will get me an extra entry, which I would appreciate.  Thanks!


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And the winner is…

8 of you entered my little contest, so I went over to a random number generator and asked for 1 interger betweenn 1 and 8.

The result, as you can see here, is….

6!!!

Congratulations (hold on while I go look up who number 6 was) Robyn! You win a $30 gift certificate to your choice of online yarn store. Anything you want from your own shop? LOL

To everyone who didn’t win, thank you for playing! I had a fun time coming up with a 7-themed contest, and I hope you enjoyed choosing something for each sin. Please know that everything truly was random and I was just as excited to see who the winner would be as you guys were/are. I hope you feel like I did this fairly, and look forwards to more contests in the future.


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8 entries…

…in my Se7en Deadly Sins of Knitting contest:
Keatyn
Maaike
Caroline
Kadi
Tara
Robyn
Dianne
Criquette snuck in at the almost-last minute.

Keep ’em coming- only 46 minutes to go!

p.s. Just so you know how this will all go down…tomorrow I will give you each a number based on your order in this running tally of entries (Keatyn is #1, Maaike is #2, and so on). I will use a random-number generator to choose the winning number. Easy-peasy.


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777

To celebrate my blog reaching seven hundred and seventy seven posts, I’m holding a contest.

You’ve heard of the Seven Deadly Sins, right? (Or you’ve at least seen the movie Se7en, with Brad Pitt?) No? Well, the Seven Deadly Sins are Pride, Envy, Gluttony, Lust, Anger, Greed and Sloth.
According to the Seven Deadly Sins website, these are how the sins are defined:
Pride is excessive belief in one’s own abilities, that interferes with the individual’s recognition of the grace of God. It has been called the sin from which all others arise. Pride is also known as Vanity.

 

Envy is the desire for others’ traits, status, abilities, or situation.

Gluttony is an inordinate desire to consume more than that which one requires.
Lust is an inordinate craving for the pleasures of the body.
Anger is manifested in the individual who spurns love and opts instead for fury. It is also known as Wrath.

Greed is the desire for material wealth or gain, ignoring the realm of the spiritual. It is also called Avarice or Covetousness.

Sloth is the avoidance of physical or spiritual work.
I started thinking about how these sins could relate to my knitting. I know that they don’t fit exactly, especially with the definitions as stated above. But, I knew that my knitting hobby wasn’t all love and roses either. So here’s my list:
Pride- Knitting Bag with Perfect Pocket. Oh I was so proud of myself! I *knew* I’d designed the PERFECT knitting bag, with exactly the right pockets to hold exactly the right accessories. I’d even created the Perfect Pocket with its specific features and purposes. It was going to be huge! Um…yeah. It’s been in storage so long that I have no clue where it is. It used to be Sam’s favorite sleeping spot, so what was a black felted bag is now really white and hairy. It’s huge- but in a “really big” sense, not a “everyone wants one” sense. And it’s unfinished. I consider my pride a wee bit checked, thanks to this project.
Envy- A swift and a niddy noddy. I’m so jealous of all of you who have one. Do I need them? No. But oh do I want them!
Gluttony-Homespun jacket and hat. Oh the gluttony here! I was in Ottawa and given the opportunity for a rare trip to Michael’s, the craft store. Did I buy something special? No. I bought about 35(!!!) skeins of LionBrand Homespun. I bought enough to make the jacket and hat for myself, plus enough red and black to make Yannick and I each oversized hooded sweatshirts. Well, after knitting with the homespun long enough to make my jacket, I discovered how the yarn releases little tufts of fiber as you knit. I was fed up of knitting with it long before even finishing the jacket, not to mention the way the yarn bunches along itself and has to be eased back down. Oh- and did I mention that I NEVER wear the jacket? It has lived on my mannequin ever since the original photos were taken – in 2006!! This was definitely a case of “eyes bigger than stomach”…in knitting terms, that is.
Lust- The Noro Kureyon striped scarf, as seen at Brooklyn Tweed. Maaike had pointed me over there and when I took one look at the scarf, I was hooked. I had to have one. NOW. I think I ordered the yarn for it in under a week, and not long after that, as soon as we’d finished our “current” projects, we cast on for a knitalong. Ever lust for something and then when you get it, it’s not as good as you thought? This was SO not like that. It was better than I’d thought. The knitting was mindless, the yarn was softer than I’d thought, and the color combination still thrills me. Score one for lust!
Anger- my dad’s thrummed mittens (no completed photo, only some old wip shots there, sorry). I’ve made peace with the mittens, but I’m still a little bitter about them. Of course, I’m mostly angry at myself. I was so looking forwards to knitting with a new technique (the thrums) that I didn’t stop to consider the recipient. Sure, my mom said my dad’s hands were always cold. Sure, nothing would be warmer than thrummed mittens. Sure. Unfortunately I didn’t think about who the gift was for- my dad, the smoker. Mittens have no fingers. You can’t smoke with mittens on. The mittens don’t get worn. Sigh. Moving on…
Greed- Patterns. Oh my- I can’t have enough. And it’s not just the free ones online or magazines, it’s pay ones too! Rogue, the pocket pals books, the wonderful Wallaby…so many patterns have found their way into my grubby little hands. And am I knitting them? Of course not. They are being stored so they can be savored…while I sit here trying to design my own stuff. There’s probably some irony here if I could be bothered to look.
Sloth- the Kosher Sweater. Come on- 3 years sitting in a bag with only 20 stitches waiting to be bound off?? That’s just plain lazy, folks.

So there you have it- my Seven Deadly Knitting Sins. I want to know what yours are. You can send your list by email, you can post it in a comment to this post, or you can post it to your blog and leave me a comment here to go take a look. You can use all words or you can include photos. My only condition is that you list something for each of the seven sins.

The contests starts today, and will end at midnight Wednesday, April 2 2008. That gives you 7 days to play.

Wanna know what you’re playing for?
The winner will get a $30 gift certificate to the online yarn store of their choice. Good luck!

Before I go, here are a few photos:

Mommy with Jakob at 45 weeks. He’s getting so big! This photo isn’t so great ‘cus he looks much chubbier than he is, but you can always go back a few posts and see him in his pjs on the rocking chair to know that he doesn’t have all that pudge. I’m not sure if you can click on the photo to see it bigger, but if you can- look at those teeth! You can also get a look at some family and wedding photos in the screen behind us. 🙂

I actually took this photo a few days ago but never got around to posting it. Since we had our time change so early in the year, there is so much light in the house when I get home from work! I took this photo at 6:30 at night, with no flash, in a room with one big window. I couldn’t get enough of the natural light and so I took this wip photo. Finally I managed to get one photo that shows the colors accurately AND shows the cable. This is the same cardigan front I showed you a few weeks ago.

Tonight there was a West Island Knitters meetup at a local brasserie (tavern) and I finished the front piece. I also helped my cousin Amy finish her swatch bunny. This was her first time seaming, and came right on the heels of her first time purling and her first time following a “pattern”.

It is so cute! Go over to her site to check it out, I’m sure she’ll have FO photos to share. As if I didn’t have enough on my plate- now I want one!

sd


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754…

This is my 754th post. I am thinking about running a contest in my 777th post. At the rate I post, that would end up being somewhere towards the end of March, I think. Hmm…

No photos yet. Mainly because the camera is downstairs and I’m lazy, but also because there are no new photos to show. I am going to knit more stripes and hopefully will have something to show for it later tonight.


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a contest!

Dianne is having a contest over on her blog, and is looking for your favorite tips or techniques.  Here’s one of mine!

One of my favorite knitting tips that makes my knitting life easier is how to calculate how much yarn you’ll need for a long-tail cast-on. How many times have you ended up with a tail that is much too long, or run out right towards the end? Here’s an easy way to know how much yarn you need:
Let’s say you need to cast on 100 sts. Cast on 10 sts then unravel your cast on and see how much yarn it took. Multiply that length by 10 (10 x 10 = 100) and that will show what length yarn you need. Add a few inches for weaving in (or a longer length for seaming, if necessary), and that’s it!

(Obviously you need to multiply the 10-st-co length by whatever number it will take to give you the number of sts YOU need to cast on).

(If you decide to enter, please leave in the comments that I referred you. Thanks!)